A few years ago, the New York Post ran a paparazzi photo of a middle-aged driver at a Long Island gas station; the man, snapped eating potato chips, was identified as "Former movie star Alec Baldwin." Amid the Baldwin babbydaddy flap, it's easy to overlook the fact that there was no more impressive comeback last year than his Emmy-nominated "30 Rock" turn as Jack Donaghy, the elegantly thuggish, faux-wise GE executive promoted (on the heels of his "Trivection Oven triumph") to Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming.

30 Rock's stellar first season hits DVD this week and, while we wish the extras (which include some glorified bloopers and a fake talk show with Kenneth the Page) were a little more Baldwin-heavy, we'll take what we can get. In the meantime, it's worth revisiting some other roles that paved his road to success playing smarm:

In David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Baldwin is Blake, the soulless blowhard sent from corporate to deliver bad news to an office of bad-real estate salesmen. His watch cost more than your car. And coffee, lest we forget, is for closers.

When the brilliant, murderous Dr. Hill is accused of having a God complex in 1993's Malice, he responds with -- what else? -- a steely, deliciously quotable speech, this time penned by Aaron Sorkin.

The movie mostly feels like a made-for-TV trifle set in pastel-happy South Beach, but Baldwin's turn as a sociopath who poses as a cop in Miami Blues (1990) lends it heft. Creepy, unsettling, wild-eyed heft.